Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives

Collective memory of political events : social psychological perspectives

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Their formation is affected by cognitive and emotional factors, but it takes place in the context of human interactions with other humans or with cultural artifacts. They are shaped by, and transmitted through, narratives. Thus, small a family, a group of friends or large a whole nation. According to ing, and mobilizing social identities. As a consequence, they the strong version, groups have memories above and beyond are involved in intergroup relations, particularly in intergroup the minds of group members. For example, Barack a metaphor that can be useful in some circumstances — i.

In contrast, the distributed version assumes which the USA were founded. Then he emphasized the that group members share some representations of the past, continuity of their history: And he listed distinguish homogeneous and complementary variants. The some of the lessons learned from this history. However, it by drawing on the collective memory shared by Americans according to Bartlett, remembering is social in nature.

Thereby, he asserted his legitimacy as the President Sutton, This activity does not amount to retrieve of the USA and tried to mobilize Americans toward the real- information that was previously stocked in the individual ization of his political agenda. More , as the founding father of collective memory precisely, it is the interaction between schemata inherited from studies, although he did not coin the term Olick et al. Accordingly, Halbwachs tried to which remembering takes place, which implies that represen- conciliate an individual-based and a collective-based accounts tations of the past can be distorted, both at the individual of collective memory.

But Halbwachs defended different, and at the collective levels. Thus, the interactions that group members have rians, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, cultural with social artifacts shape their memories Coman et al. Somehow processes in the formation of collective memory. Lay people paradoxically, the contribution of psychologists, and particu- are regularly facing the necessity of explaining the past, either larly of social psychologists, appeared relatively late in the for themselves or for others.

Klein parallels the construction of history of this movement, and it still represents only a small lay knowledge about the past with the three steps involved in portion of the bulk of studies and theoretical developments on historical research: In psychology, interest in collective elaboration of causal reasoning about past events , and memory and social representations of history sprang in the representational elaboration and communication of a repre- s with the work of Bartlett then waned only to sentation adapted to an audience. Cognitive or sociocognitive regain some visibility from the s on.

However, as we shall processes intervene at each of these steps when lay historians see, this contribution has been continuously increasing ever form their historical knowledge. What are their social psychological functions? And what the source: At the explanatory step, other cognitive phenomena may then interfere. In addition, they often fall prey to the actionist and constructivist stance.

They reckon that collective retrospective illusion or hindsight bias: This might lead to reconstructing the symbols maintained by society — because it is the interplay sequence of events in order to explain this outcome through between these public symbols and individual psychology that a coherent narrative that logically leads to it, thus makes these memories collective.

This interplay is necessary obliterating elements of the past that do not contribute or because of the very nature of human memory. Finally, social cognitive biases advocate a social interactional approach to memory can also interfere at the representational step, when according to which internal and external factors should be a representation of the past is communicated to others considered: Explaining is always explaining something claim would be that, in order to understand how a person to someone.

Human beings reconstruct their memories by using psychologist or a nonspecialist: For example, bartenders dispositional in the former than in the latter case. Thus, use the shape of glasses as cues to remember complex orders. In brief, various cognitive and social the order; the presence of different glass shapes then guides cognitive processes known by psychologists may shape their memory. As Sutton contribute to the formation of collective memories.

Some approaches have gone a step further stable external scaffolding. Brains like ours need media, in that direction by stressing the importance of conversations in objects, and other people to function fully as minds. Likewise, society restructures the world so that the group better remembers. Versions of events are seen as pragmatic speech tive memories about that event.

Collective likely to lead to collective memories when they bring social remembering is then studied as a joint activity rather than as change; are emotionally loaded; elicit social sharing; are the product of this activity: People Flashbulb memories are vivid recollections of the personal often talk about past events that had important consequences circumstances in which one receives the news about a shocking for their social group.

These conversations can thus be instru- event. For example, many people remember how was the mental in the spreading of memories across the group. For example, individual memories of violent — collective events, such as the assassination of family members were collected before and after a conversation political leaders, terrorist attacks, disasters, and catastrophes about a story they had just read.

Individual recollections were Paez et al. These events prompt emotions in most, if much more similar after than before the collective remem- not all, members of a population. Conversely, collective remembering can also lead memories. Flashbulb memories and collective memories share to the forgetting of some elements of a narrative: Collective rituals are particularly effective in maintaining collective memories.

To be sure, commemora- tive ceremonies are designed for this very function. Those Narratives rituals, through their form and content, are effective in Bartlett studied the formation of collective memories by reminding the event through the repetitive reactivation of the asking participants to recount a story they had just read to cognitive representation.

However, rites are more than others. According to Jerome Bruner , human thought is reminders, they are reenactments of the event Connerton, organized by storytelling, but this cognitive mechanism is and, as such, they also engage bodies. In collective validated and maintained socially. As accounts of events emotional gatherings, people perform the same gestures, adopt involving some temporal or causal coherence Laszlo, , the same postures, sing the same songs at the unison.

This narratives have been viewed as means par excellence for forming synchrony leads to an important social sharing of emotions, to and transmitting collective memories. These narratives are not univocal: But this very process of contestation ensures that the memory of the event is kept alive. Laszlo has Cognitive, social interactional, and emotional factors thus play studied the historical trajectories of nations as remembered by a role in the formation and maintenance of collective memo- laypeople.

For example, these studies showed that the history ries. Beyond the question of their formation, social psycholo- of Hungary is remembered as a story of grandeur anti- gists have devoted much attention to their functions. According to psychologists, collective memories are kept alive if they meet the needs and motivations of group members.

Social identity Tajfel and uals, it triggers emotions.

Collective memory - Wikipedia

First, collective memories a function of the audience he was addressing: According to Liu and a Congolese audience, he would represent the history of Hilton Far from being groups, and ascertains what its options are for facing present a simple example of opportunism, this apparent lack of challenges. Hence, he thus provide content to the social identity. Thus, this imagined past relations. These contents will be very different group protective attitudes, such as opposing immigration whether the group is casted as the victim or as the perpetrator in Jetten and Wohl, ; Smeekes and Verkuyten, Being a group that compares positively with relevant out-groups in casted as a perpetrator group has consequences both within the order to derive a positive collective self-esteem.

Therefore, the perpetrator status is associated Social groups thus compare their respective pasts, and with important tension, undermining social cohesion within generally strive to derive a positive sense of their identity the group. However, this status may also have a positive impact through this comparison. This helps explain why collective at the intergroup level. For example, memories actions in history Baumeister and Hastings, These aversive strong defensive reactions Branscombe and Doosje, For example, Serb Doosje, This position can be traumatic for the group, events of the last 70 years mainly listed events involving war or and hence also threaten its cohesion.

When groups collaborate to recall information, they experience collaborative inhibition, a decrease in performance compared to the pooled memory recall of an equal number of individuals. Weldon and Bellinger and Basden, Basden, Bryner, and Thomas provided evidence that retrieval interference underlies collaborative inhibition, as hearing other members' thoughts and discussion about the topic at hand interferes with one's own organization of thoughts and impairs memory.

The main theoretical account for collaborative inhibition is retrieval disruption. During the encoding of information, individuals form their own idiosyncratic organization of the information. This organization is later used when trying to recall the information. In a group setting as members exchange information, the information recalled by group members disrupts the idiosyncratic organization one had developed. Despite the problem of collaborative inhibition, working in groups may benefit an individual's memory in the long run, as group discussion exposes one to many different ideas over time.

Working alone initially prior to collaboration seems to be the optimal way to increase memory. Early speculations about collaborative inhibition have included explanations, such as diminished personal accountability, social loafing and the diffusion of responsibility, however retrieval disruption remains the leading explanation. Studies have found that collective inhibition to sources other than social loafing, as offering a monetary incentive have been evidenced to fail to produce an increase in memory for groups.

Personal accountability — drawing attention to one's own performance and contribution in a group — also did not reduce collaborative inhibition.

Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives

Therefore, group members' motivation to overcome the interference of group recall cannot be achieved by several motivational factors. Information exchange among group members often helps individuals to remember things that they would not have remembered had they been working alone. In other words, the information provided by Person A may 'cue' memories in Person B.

This phenomenon results in enhanced recall. Compared to recalling individually, group members can provide opportunities for error prune during recall to detect errors that would otherwise be uncorrected by an individual. Group settings can also provide opportunities to exposure of erroneous information that may be mistaken to be correct or previously studied.

Listening to group members recall the previously encoded information can enhance memory as it provides a second exposure opportunity to the information. Studies have shown that information forgotten and excluded during group recall can promote the forgetting of related information compared to information unrelated to that which was excluded during group recall. Selective forgetting has been suggested to be a critical mechanism involved in the formation of collective memories and what details are ultimately included and excluded by group members.

This mechanism has been studied using the socially shared retrieval induced forgetting paradigm, a variation of the retrieval induced forgetting method with individuals. Bottom-up approaches to the formation of collective memories investigate how cognitive-level phenomena allow for people to synchronize their memories following conversational remembering.

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Due to the malleability of human memory, talking with one another about the past results in memory changes that increase the similarity between the interactional partners' memories [28] When these dyadic interactions occur in a social network, one can understand how large communities converge on a similar memory of the past. The collective memory of a nation is represented in part by the memorials it chooses to erect. Whatever a nation chooses to memorialize in physical monument, or perhaps more significantly, what not to memorialize, is an indicator of the collective memory.

Collective memory is also sustained through a continuous production of representational forms. In the media age — and maybe particularly during the last decade of increasing digitization — this generates a flow of, and production of, second hand memories see James E. Particular narratives and images are reproduced and reframed, yet also questioned and contested through new images and so forth.

Collective memory today differs much from the collective memories of an oral culture, where no printing technique or transportation contributed to the production of imagined communities see Imagined Communities where we come to share a sense of heritage and commonality with many human beings we have never met — as in the manner a citizen may feel a sort of 'kinship' with people of his nation, region or city.

The arrival of film created many images, film scenes, news scenes, photographs, quotes, and songs, which became very familiar to regular moviegoers and remained in their collective memory. Images of particular movie stars became part of collective memory. During cinema visits, people could watch newsreels of news stories from around the world. For the first time in history a mass audience was able to view certain stories, events, and scenes, all at the same time. They could all view how for instance the Hindenburg disaster was caught on camera and see and remember these scenes all at once.

When television became a global mass entertainment medium in the s and s the collective memory of former cinema visitors increased when various films could be repeated endlessly and worldwide on television broadcasts. Hereby particular film scenes have become well-known, even to people who had not seen these films on their original cinematic release. The same applies for television shows like I Love Lucy which have been repeated so often over the decades that certain episodes and scenes have become ingrained in the public's collective memory.

When newsreels in the cinema gradually made place for television news broadcasting , it became a habit for mass audiences to watch the daily news on television. Worldwide this led to a new kind of collective memory where various news events could be shown much quicker than with the cinema News Reels. Therefore, certain filmed news stories could be shown on the same day they happened and even live during the broadcast itself. Millions of people have viewed the assassination of John F.

Kennedy in , the landing of Apollo 11 in , the Wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana , the death of Princess Diana, and the September 11 attacks on their television. In fact, certain questions like "What were you doing when Many people can remember what they were doing when certain internationally big media events occurred and these type of questions are usually used as a sort of milestone in individual people's life.

For example, "What were you doing when you heard that John Lennon was shot? Due to television repeats, these moments could be relived even long after the actual event happened. The introduction of video stores and video recorders in the s, the internet in the s and the DVD player and YouTube in the s even increased the opportunity to view and check out famous and infamous movie and TV scenes.

Thanks to all these innovations certain scenes have become part of audiences' collective memory. This makes it easy for journalists, comedians, advertisers, politicians, etc. For example, when president Ronald Reagan concluded a speech on March 13, against the increase of taxes he said " Make my day ".

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Most people in the audience and TV viewers understood the reference to the Clint Eastwood film Sudden Impact and laughed and cheered as a consequence of that. The dance moves from Michael Jackson 's music video for "Thriller" have been repeatedly shown on TV so much that they are instantly recognizable and therefore imitated frequently for comedic effect in films, TV shows, commercials, etc. Whenever a comedy show or film features a scene where someone is killed or threatened in a shower , most people understand it as a parody of Psycho.

Various cartoons from Bugs Bunny to Shrek have spoofed famous fairy tales , knowing that everybody is familiar with the original stories and will immediately laugh at every deviation. The roar of movie monster Godzilla and Johnny Weissmuller 's Tarzan yell have become instantly recognizable and easy to put into a context, even without the images. Numerous TV shows and films such as The Simpsons , Family Guy , Scary Movie , the Shrek films, and the films of Mel Brooks , have referenced, parodied, imitated and recreated these famous scenes, often to the point of overkill.

Certain observers, like Kenneth Tynan in a quote from his diaries from October 19, have noted that due to the heavy rotation and repeats of all these famous film scenes, often even without their original context, they have become part of the cultural consciousness. As the sheer number of films piles up, their influence will increase, until we have a civilization entirely molded by cinematic values and behavior patterns.

The influence of television scenes on collective memory has been noticeable with children who are able to quote lines and songs from commercials, films and television shows they have watched regularly. Some young children who have watched a large amount of television have been known to react in an unnatural way to certain situations, comparable with overacting , because they recreate scenes they remember seeing in similar situations on television. There have been cases reported of people who've compared their own life too much with the romanticized, idealized life depicted in films and television series.

They try to recreate the happy families and perfect love relationships they remember seeing on television or in movies. Not all scenes that were once collective memory are remembered as well today. Certain shows, commercials and films that were popular in one decade are shown less frequently on television in the next.

Memory Studies

Thus, certain scenes do not rest in the collective memory of the next generation. Many references in old Bugs Bunny cartoons to Hollywood stars and radio shows who were famous in the s, are almost obscure to modern viewers. On the other hand, certain scenes have remained in the collective memory, due to being constantly repeated in other media and are well known even for those unfamiliar with the original.

For example, even people who never saw the film King Kong know that there is a scene in which the large ape climbs the Empire State Building with a human girl in his hand. This could be a negative side effect of the multi-referential nature films and television shows. Younger audiences, unfamiliar with the original subject being referenced in a contemporary film or TV series, do not recognize the reference and assume that, for instance a Twilight Zone plot reference in The Simpsons has been thought up by the creators of The Simpsons instead of the other way around.

In some cases, references or parodies of older movies in contemporary films and TV shows are almost comparable to plagiarism since they just mimic or imitate a famous scene frame-by-frame instead of adding a funny new element. In a more general and global perspective, the work of Jeffrey Andrew Barash emphasizes the ways in which the mass media select, articulate and transmit reported events and thus endow them with public significance.

Mass media representation of communicated events configures them in accord with spatio-temporal patterns and a logic that are not simple replicas of the order of everyday experience, since disseminated information is charged with an autonomous symbolic sense through which public awareness is channeled and sedimented in collective memory.

This autonomous symbolic sense draws its potency from an uncanny ability to simulate direct experience while dissimulating the gap which separates it from the immediate life world in which it originates.

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